OPINION: Liz Truss, the embassy and empty gesture politics

These days, more than most, columnists are on a hiding to nothing. Get out your tiny violins and weep for those of us doomed to predict things and within a heartbeat become overtaken by events. 

So it is with a certain amount of trepidation that I turn to (and I can’t believe I am typing this) Prime Minister Liz Truss, currently in 10 Downing Street but for all I know on her way out of the back door along with Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng the minute these words hit the street.

For, not content with plunging the pound into freefall and wreaking untold damage on the UK economy in JUST THREE WEEKS (I know, I can’t believe it either, even Johnson took longer than that), Truss has been tossing sweeteners in Israel’s direction.

Please, I thought, registering the malign effect Truss’s dead-hand politics was having domestically, please leave the rest of the world alone, and particularly, do please leave Israel out of your calculations. But no. Truss has decided, for reasons which elude me — and everyone else — to announce that she is considering moving the British embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Not content with plunging the pound into freefall and wreaking untold damage on the UK economy, Truss has been tossing sweeteners in Israel’s direction.

She first made this suggestion at a pre-election event hosted by the Conservative Friends of Israel, and I can see why she might have said this to an audience of the faithful. It’s gesture politics, but an empty gesture at that: a cheap shot to rouse the rabble and get them onside, with no discernible benefit.

I thought then that Truss had made her announcement as a crowd-pleaser, and predicted she would never deliver on this pointless pledge. So for those getting exercised at her comment, I thought, really, calm down, she won’t do it.

But now she’s said it again, this time in New York for the UN General Assembly. Fresh from the Queen’s funeral where she wasn’t required to do much other than wear black and read something in a monotone at Westminster Abbey, Truss appears to have decided to make herself “interesting” by repeating this “considering” suggestion The “considering” is about the only wise thing about this — because if she doesn’t deliver on the offer to move the embassy, she can always say she was advised against it and it wasn’t a full-scale pledge in the first place.

This week, however, The Guardian recalled that Donald Trump’s relocation of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018 sparked widespread protests by Palestinians — and the move, indeed, was strongly criticised by the then British government.

Now I can’t say, hand on heart, that the Palestinians care over-much about what Britain does, and it may well be the case that should the embassy actually does the unthinkable and moves to Jerusalem, about as much notice will be taken of its new premises as those of Guatemala or Honduras, which followed in Trump’s concrete footsteps.

I know what certain elements of Israeli society believe would be the necessity of Britain moving out of its Hayarkon Street building in Tel Aviv for some hot-desks in Jerusalem, which, given the way sterling is performing against the dollar, is about all Britain is likely to be able to afford.

But what would really be the benefit for Britain? Such a move would render us incapable of offering a neutral voice in the Arab-Israeli conflict, to try to persuade the Palestinians back to the negotiating table.

I’m going to stick my neck out here and predict Truss won’t stay in office long enough to enact on any such rash “consideration”. And those in Israel in support of the move shouldn’t bank on her longevity either.

Promises, promises…